


Intersecting Parallels

by blackrider11



Category: The Half of It (2020)
Genre: Also very proud of the title, Gen, I don't read these books they talk about so no literary references from me, non-romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:55:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24146239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackrider11/pseuds/blackrider11
Summary: Someone on tumblr asked for a 10k story on Aster's longing for Ellie... it's only half that and I don't think I nearly have the lyrical/romanticized writing that Aster and Ellie probably share but here's my contribution to this fandom.Apparently, this also falls under "5 times and 1" category (or is it 4 and 1? I didn't count how many scenes I wrote). So, the 5 (or 4) times Aster thought about talking to or about Ellie, and the one time she did.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66





	Intersecting Parallels

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I’m fairly certain that they’re Catholic. The way the booth was set up was Roman Catholic so I’m running with that. Someone asked for a 10k fic about Aster’s “barely repressed” longing and taking note of Ellie Chu but never talking to her for four years. It’s probably not the 10k of longing you asked for, but for what it’s worth, here it is. Since the town is made up, the layout is not the same as the town I’m basing it off of, which is partially mine (ironically in Washington by train tracks and about forty miles from a hot spring) and some other small towns I’ve been to in Washington/Western Idaho. Just in case ya’ll get any ideas (also feel free go figure out where I’m putting them), DO NOT GO OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WOODS UNPREPARED. Just FYI, it’s a bad idea. Also, Aster’s been in Squahamish going since the last year of middle school (8th grade in the US), otherwise the whole idea that Ellie’s been playing at the church for four years while they’re still in Senior year doesn’t make sense. I might re-write this in 2nd person but I doubt it. Also, I know there are not nearly enough literary references in here, but I’m not an avid reader of the kinds of books they read, so I stuck to what I know.

The first time Aster saw her was near the end of summer. The promise of autumn, hinted in the wind that spoke of a winter Aster had not yet seen. Aster had somehow fallen in with the rich crowd. She wondered sometimes, if she wasn’t as light skinned as she was if she would have been accepted. Or maybe if she had been half as pretty, where would she have ended up. What kind of life would she have if she wasn’t the preacher's daughter? But here they were all piled into Trig’s truck. And underage driving was allowed for business reasons. And if Trig drove around for non-business related reasons, the entire town appeared to turn a blind eye. After all Trig’s family owned half the town. So when they drove up the road, she thought nothing of the person riding a bicycle in the opposite direction.

She’d been here since the beginning of summer and she was not impressed. But as the good preacher’s daughter, she did everything she could to fit in, and was succeeding. It was getting harder every day and some days it felt like she couldn’t breathe. She startled when Trig opened the car window and yelled loudly “CHUGGA-CHUGGA CHU-CHU!” He closed the window and looked smug and impressed with himself.

“What was that?”

“Just some Chinese kid, don’t worry about it.”

“What’s their name?” In the past three months, she hadn’t seen a single person who wasn’t white. She didn’t bring it up with her parents, not wanting to sound like she was complaining, or worse, racist. It was an adjustment, one she didn’t think she’d ever get used to.

“Ellie Chu. She plays at the church every Sunday.”

Honestly, Aster hadn’t noticed, she had thought that she’d met everyone at the church. “Ellie Chu,” she silently mouthed, just to make sure she didn’t forget. For just a moment, she felt just a little less alone.

The next Sunday, Aster fought the urge to look behind her in the middle of her father’s sermon. She had heard the piano, but hadn’t seen the girl come in. When mass was over, Aster turned to finally get a look at the girl. People made their way toward the exit but if she didn’t even catch a glimpse of her. Three Sunday masses past and school was set to start on Tuesday. Still, Ellie eluded her. It didn’t seem to matter when she arrived, if she waited outside the church to try to get a single look at her. No one told her where she lived, and Aster definitely was not that kind of person.

Honestly, finding the nearest decent library was half as much effort as trying to see the tail end of the ever slippery Ellie Chu. To say it had a good selection of books that she found would be generous, but it did have several of the classics and between the four libraries within driving distance, it wasn’t terrible. Thankfully, digital books were available, and much, much easier to hide than the larger books that she had carried around in Elementary School. Before she never really used books as a buffer between her and other people. It had been a way to connect with others and the discussions usually devolved into arguments where neither side was completely right. She missed those.

That is to say, she missed her friends. None of them were great at communicating or responding. A text could go unanswered for weeks or months at a time, even when they had attended the same school. It never bothered her then, but it did now. Sometimes, she would get a text, and it took everything she had not to respond with an essay. By the time school was a month underway, they came even less, and were much more stilted. More polite. Distant. Later on, they would stop texting altogether. Trig’s group helped at first, driving away the isolation that she had felt when her friends stopped texting regularly. But they talked about the same things, usually themselves, or gossiped about others. To Aster’s surprise Trig could actually hold a conversation about the gravel business and it was insightful, that was if you could sift through all the comments about himself.

Still, no matter how she tried to bury it, there was an aching loneliness that was slowly growing. A seed that was planted when they left, that only grew from a star in isolation, watered by provisional acceptance. Aster had to wonder, how can one survive here? Choked on the weeds of forced societal norms. How did Ellie feel growing up here? Is this all that I’m meant to be? Is this all there is waiting at the end of the road? A place to nowhere? Everything expected and given, but nothing truly gained? Did she too feel the incessant lack of true connection? Or did she even know what it felt like at all? Who was luckier? Aster rolled over in her bed. She’d track down Ellie and ask her tomorrow.

She didn’t.

* * *

  
  


Logically, time goes at a steady pace, but it felt like a year had gone by so quickly. Even if there were moments she could recall that felt like they went on for days, somehow time dragged on and she never found the time to talk to the only other person she knew could understand.

Still, it was beautiful out here and her fingers had itched to do some proper painting, but she never could quite find the right drawing. All her sketches weren’t demanding “paint me!” like some used to. It really wasn’t an excuse but it was the one she was going with. She had spent all summer with her family, or with Trig, or her friends, and if she took a moment to be honest with herself, she was bored. There wasn’t much that deviated from the rest of the year. Swimming wasn’t special because they could do it all year round in the Carson's pool.

The only real standout was the first snow that year had been one of amazement, the excitement of the first snow rippled through the town. She found herself ill prepared for the amount of snow thrown in her direction, it seemed like everyone participated in the joy that it brought. Except one. A bike rode by with a well bundled rider on it. She recognized that bike. Would now be a good time? She had already started toward the road trying to intercept the bike before the thought had finished. Maybe just maybe, today would be the day. It was overdue, if she could just catch the bike before-

“HEY! CHU-CHU!” Trig passed her snowball in hand. He threw it before Aster could stop him. The cyclist did not change their speed or outwardly seemed remotely bothered by it as the snow arched wide far overhead. There was a reason that the team never scored in football. Aster had to wonder just how many times had this happened in the past for her to keep riding completely phrased.

She pushed Trig, “Why would you do that?”

Trig only grinned and tackled her to the ground. His laughter had been infectious, it was one of the things she liked about him, and he helped her up before running off to rejoin the group. She looked to the road trying to catch sight of her. She would try to keep the memory of her riding on the road to paint later. The harsh sunlight of the mid-day that glinted off the helmet just so. The shadow that stretched impossibly far although the sun was overhead. The snow, still softly falling to the ground. The tracks left by the bike running parallel to the ditch on the side. She’d sketch it when she got back. But her family had been ill-prepared for the cold and Aster had fallen sick right after the excursion. Her hands had shaken so badly and she messed up each attempt, then the fever set in. In the end, it didn’t matter. She had attempted to draw it so many times. The bike, the snow, the way the rider was bundled, from any angle she could imagine. It was never right.

It was well into fall when Aster finally found inspiration again. She had learned that year that even school never stopped the girls from going on an overnight trip to the next town for shopping. Her parents didn’t even question when she told them, that is to say she might have also given the girls some of the money she’d been saving up from her job, just in case. After leaving the house, she went to the town line and kept right going, towards the mountains. She did linger, just for a moment a block away from the train station. It was right there. Right there, yet she couldn’t bring herself to move another step in that direction. She should introduce herself properly. Was it too late for that? The station wasn’t her destination today anyway, but she could. She could do it later. Maybe. That’s what she told herself each time she went to the library too.

The road out of town was well kept, it had to be, being the only real road coming from the west going east to Leavenworth. The other one is well used, being the Old Cascade Highway, but it’s only really used locally, and you could tell where the town line ended by the maintenance of the road. But she wasn’t that interested in it today. She had a copy of the geothermal map and had overlaid it with another. She had done a bit of scouting before when the group had been busy entertaining themselves and she could slip away to explore not too far away, but nothing had turned up anything promising. There was one last place to check. Since she could check it out and still make it back with plenty of time, she had taken her last sketch book with her. Aster made sure to keep to the roads as much as possible, taking a left to follow the river upstream. But soon enough she was off, and very much in the middle of the woods.

The first time she had done this it had been strangely freeing, and it became something to do when she could. Not often enough to have her dad raise questions, which was too little in her opinion, but people talk if she were to up and disappear for a while. A faint train horn, no matter where you went in the valley it seemed as though you could always find your way back to town just by following the sound. In a way it was like it was calling for someone or leading them home. Maybe that’s how Ellie got home when she was younger.

It was quiet out here, not the quiet that you get in town. It wasn’t people but birds. No rumble of engines but the rustle of leaves. For the most part it seemed that the people of the town were content to be where they were, constant, never changing, never growing, stuck. Is that what she was becoming? She walked north. Her destination couldn’t be too much further.

Aster could feel the heat before she heard the water. When she reached it, it was smaller than she thought it would be. Nonetheless, she took out her phone and marked the location on the map. It wouldn’t load the rest of the map, out of the service area, but now at least she could cut down the time it took to get here. She took off her shoes and dipped her feet in the water. Warm. The entire area was warm, hidden by the trees and a bit of a rock ledge. It hadn’t rained recently so the rock she was on was mostly dry, a bit of water from the moisture in the air but it didn’t matter, she hadn’t had real inspiration for a long time. And she began to draw.

Aster watched her hands as they created. Sometimes with the purpose of thought, sometimes instinct. And sometimes it felt as though it was like they had a mind of their own, like she was simply the instrument that the environment was using to express itself.

When she got back home that same day, she told her parents that they had wanted to come back early. She put on her paint clothes, in the privacy of her own room there was no one to judge her. There wasn’t much to set up, most of it was ready and waiting, beckoning her to come and paint. Two days, well a day and a half, so by Monday night she was done. It was the best she’d done in a while, it wasn’t great but it felt like she’d accomplished something worthwhile. When she showed her parents, they were not impressed. When she showed Trig, he said it was “nice” and instantly moved onto talking about his day.

She threw out her painting clothes on Wednesday.

* * *

  
  


Junior year rolled around, and Aster discovered that she had developed a love-hate relationship with the Spanish language. She missed it, God knew how much she missed it, but she only ever heard it spoken within her own home. Never in help, or praise, or love. Or maybe it was love, the correction of her faults told to her so that no one outside her family would know. Did Ellie’s family talk like that to her? Did she even speak Chinese? If so, which dialect? Her own parents spoke a version of Spanish that sometimes integrated some Guatemalan accents. She missed having an actual real conversation, in any language. The yearly trip to Sacramento was not nearly enough. And each time she left the connection she felt to the outside the world of Squahamish seemed a little less real. As she packed parts of herself up and put them back in a box like she was her suitcase. Still, the trip always reminded her that there were people worse off than her and to count her own blessings. Things could always be worse. So she should be content. She _is_ content. Her life is fine, she doesn’t need anything more.

Except...

Each time she returned from the trip, she told herself she’d finally talk to her. Was almost four years too long to wait? Aster wondered. Granted the amount she knew about the other girl could be counted on one hand.

One, Ellie was smart or at least well read. Aster snagged one of the papers she wrote for Trig once. Two, she was small and slippery. That one she found out the hard way. It had taken four months for a glimpse and her size certainly didn’t help matters. Even now, unless Aster was actively looking, she could go months without seeing her even if they shared classes together. Three, she played the piano very well. Her father had been nervous about keeping the player from the last priest on the payroll, especially one so young, had been completely justified considering the last few accompanyists that he had to deal with. Four, she lived at the station with her father. Five, she biked everywhere on a road bike even in the cold of winter. Aster had learned quite a bit more about that at camp when she had stopped to listen in on a conversation regarding the pros and cons of thin vs thick tires on winter roads. It had been the most interesting conversation all year. It hadn’t even been in a topic she was interested in. Modes of transportation had never interested her much, outside of the shapes, shadows, or the reflections that could be distorted that they provided in painting, But the conversation had caught her attention and she had been drawn into it. One of the girls had seen her and asked if she was interested in biking. After a moment, Aster had declined joining in the conversation.

There had been a hestience there that wasn’t normal for her. It had been the pause, the specific kind of silence before the decline. It was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Back home when the others asked her questions, she had an answer right away or an excuse not to join the conversation. She had forgotten about it until later that night when the room was quiet and the wind could be heard over the traffic. Why was that one different?

Aster saw the glint of the helmet in the sun before she could make out the person on the bike. It took all her self control not to roll down the window and shout a greeting. But her father was in the car, and the last thing he wanted was a spectacle of any kind. So she bit down on that urge and buried it. Once the break is over, she thought, I’ll do it. This time I will. 

  
  


* * *

Senior year came far too fast for Aster. This was the year she had to decide what to do with the rest of her life and it felt like she had been in stasis so long that she didn’t know what would happen if she took a step forward. There was no going back, time didn’t work like that, and if she made a mistake, there was no turning back. And her life wasn’t bad. It was more than what most people like her could expect, if one considered all the statistics that applied to her. Would she and Ellie just be another statistic in the town of Squahamish? Part of the 0.6% of the Asian population and the 1.44% of the Latin American population in a town that was more than 96% white?

Aster had resigned herself to the idea that Ellie and her, well, their lives would never truly intersect. It was as though their lives ran in parallels of each other. It felt like when one moved, the other moved in the same direction, never to meet in the middle. Sometimes, it felt like they got close and the few times they had met eyes across a crowded hallway, or a classroom, it had felt like a connection. But the bell rang or the other was swallowed up by the crowd and Aster could see the walls thrown back up and whatever was there was gone. Then again, it could just be her imagination, a painting that never was and never will be.

* * *

  
  


When it happened, it was so much easier than Aster thought it would be. She heard the papers hit the ground and stopped to help pick them up. It was only polite, something that the people here claimed they were, but lacked when they could get away without being called out on it.

“These halls are murder,” she said squatting down, as though she’d talked to this person everyday and wasn't a nervous wreck.

“I’m Ellie Chu.” Her glasses really framed her face, now that she got a good look.

“Yes, I know.” How couldn’t she know? Wait, should she introduce herself? But she kept talking, why was she talking about church? Talk about something else. Books, she can talk about books. They should talk, but Ellie was clearly busy with whatever the phone call was. People don’t call unless it’s important, she should let her get back to it. Still it was nice.

“Yes, I know? All the barely repressed longing? Really?” Aster muttered when she was sure she was out of range. “You might as well have said, ‘I love dogs.’” Still, she could feel the smile etched on her face. She didn’t know what it would lead to but it made her feel a little lighter for the rest of the day.

Paul’s letter was in her locker the next day. Maybe it was a sign to try moving a little more. A small step forward, a slight change in her life that might lead to something.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, so happy to be done with this, now I can read The Half of It fanfiction, because I didn't want to accidentally take any ideas that weren't mine, you writers know what I mean. You read something and a phrase or scene gets stuck in your brain and sometimes you don't know where it's from and then it appears in your writing.


End file.
